


In the Cicada's Cry

by Rotpeach



Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Edo Japan, Cannibalism, Horror, Human Sacrifice, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Magic, Naga, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 02:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8560867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: You are sent to a mountain shrine to pray for help. You are not told why.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i briefly mentioned an au that nobody asked for  
> here is that au

It is said that when his father was murdered by a rival clan, the young Minamoto no Yoshitsune was exiled to a holy mountain and pleaded with the guardian spirits there for strength and guidance. No matter who answered his cries, he surely would have found a path to retribution, for the mountains are home to the oldest and strongest of spirits. They are capable of miracles, of quelling hurricanes and safeguarding against armies. But he was not answered by just anyone; his plight drew the attention of one of the serpent deities of the mountain, and with his blessing, Minamoto no Yoshitsune returned home and destroyed his enemies.

That is why, when the villagers came to you at sunset begging for help, you knew you, too, would make the pilgrimage to the mountain shrine in the hopes of winning the sympathy of the gods.

The hike up the trail worn into the mountain by countless before you is difficult, and your legs are aching by the time you finally catch a glimpse of ancient torii gates sticking out of the underbrush. The moment you step beneath it, you feel a shift in the air as though the winds have changed directions, and you shiver at the cold night breeze that blows through you.

You wonder how many have walked this same path with the same hopes in their heart as you lay eyes upon the small shrine flanked by moss-covered stone lanterns. You ascend the three steps up to the offering box and kneel, setting a striped furoshiki cloth bag down beside you. It sags with the weight of coins and gemstones and colorful brocade, the hopes and dreams of nobles and peasants alike who huddled at your shrine, fear in their eyes, and begged you to save them. You clap twice and bow your head.

“Honorable spirits,” you whisper, “please hear my voice and answer my call.”

You don’t expect the answer to be immediate, but there is a harsh gust of wind that sends the crows roosting in the trees above you off in a panic and the door to the inner room of the shrine rattles open on its own. You jump to your feet, but there’s no one inside.

“I have heard your voice.”

You whirl around and your eyes widen. A man stands beside one of the stone lanterns dressed in a dark gray haori and hakama, a scar over the bridge of his nose and white scales along his cheek. A crow perches on one of his shoulders, tilting its head at you, its feathers the same color as his dark hair. You don’t need to ask to know by his commanding presence and frightening, slit-pupil eyes that you’re looking at Sano, one of the serpent gods.

“But I can’t answer your call,” he continues, regarding you coolly. “Not until you tell me why you’ve come.”

You bow your head in respect. “The fields are dying,” you say. “The rain stopped and nothing will grow now. And then there was the earthquake. So many have died already, and I fear what’s coming next.” Daringly, you raise your eyes, looking up at him from down on your knees. “I’m the caretaker of the shrine in the valley below here, and my shrine has always been a safe place in times like these, but even the land the shrine is on has been afflicted. The village closest to me asked me to come here for help.”

 Sano makes no indication that he’s listening save for his constant and unnerving eye contact until you finish your story, and then his eyes narrow. “You say you’re here on behalf of the villagers. Surely they’ve sent you with an offering?”

You eagerly pick up the furoshiki bag at your side and hold it up to him. He shoos the curious crow on his shoulder away and unties the top, examining the contents. Your heart stops when he frowns in disappointment.

“This is it?” he asks.

You nod slowly.

“A fine gesture,” he allows, returning it to you. “But I’m afraid it isn’t enough.”

“Then what would be?”

He comes closer, looming over you with a darkness in his expression that you didn’t notice before. “Do you know what’s causing the disasters befalling the village?” he asks quietly.

“N-no.” You know you’re trembling now.

“Because they did not do as I asked.” He takes your chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning your face from side to side to inspect. “I offer my protection to the village in exchange for a sacrifice. This is the second year that they have refused to provide one, and my patience has run out.” His fingertips slide over your lips and you shiver, meeting his eyes in confusion. “But now it seems they wish to make amends.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he says, the hand on your face trailing down to your neck, and your eyes widen when he wraps his fingers around your throat and squeezes once, as though in warning, “that they must have sent you to become a sacrifice.”

“No!” you scream, pushing him away and stumbling back a few steps. Sano regards you with irritation but says nothing, and you quickly try to salvage the situation. “I’m sure that wasn’t their intention,” you continue, though your voice is shaky. “What about the bag of gold and silk? If it isn’t enough, I can go back and tell them they’ll need to give you more.”

He glares down at the furoshiki bag and seizes it, untangling the knot at the top and letting the offerings inside spill to the forest floor, coins clattering and handwoven fabric falling in the dirt. “This is a bribe,” he says. “A plea for my forgiveness. Nothing more.”

“But why….” You shake your head, refusing to believe it. “They wouldn’t send me to die. I’ve always helped them. I’ve given them shelter. I prayed with them through all of this. They wouldn’t….” Tears well up in your eyes and you clutch your chest, the pain of betrayal tearing through you. “Why?”

Sano’s harsh gaze softens ever so slightly in sympathy and he says, “Humans can be cruel.”

You bit your lip. “You’re just as cruel as they are.”

“Of course I am.” He again comes within reach, and you flinch when he cups your cheek. “All gods are as cruel as the humans who worship them. It’s their feelings and prayers that give us life.” He wipes your tears away with his thumb. “The moment you set foot beneath the torii gate,” he murmurs, “your life became mine. I can’t let you go, not unless….”

“Unless what?” you ask eagerly.

He hesitates. “Unless you bring someone to replace you.”

The last of your hope dies within you and you look at the ground. “I can’t. That’s what they did, isn’t it? Replaced one of their own with me? I can’t….” You clench your hands into fists at your sides, your sadness slowly overcome by bitterness. “I can’t stoop to the same level.”

Sano does not remark upon your nobility or honor. He neither praises nor mocks you for your choice. Silently, he pulls away, leaving you feeling cold, and motions to a footpath worn into the mountain leading further behind the shrine.

You take a deep breath and feel your eyes burning with fresh tears, but you fight to keep them down and nod, following him down the path. The mountain comes alive, grasses swaying and animal cries rising up in a loud cacophony, as though anticipating your blood.

Up ahead, Sano has stopped, standing beside an enormous boulder with a cleanly cut, flat surface. A blessed rope of rice straw, not unlike the ones at the shrine you take care of, circles the stone, and you see dried blood caked to its surface, rivulets frozen in time dripping down the edges. Coiling, scarlet spider lilies grow in abundance at its base. You wonder how many have died here.

“Lie down,” he says, his tone that of a gentle order. “I’m going to bind your wrists.”

You think fleetingly of running away, of sprinting back down the jagged mountain path and locking yourself inside the shrine. You know it wouldn’t matter, that not all the protective charms and barrier wards and sutras in the world could keep out a god denied his sacrifice. And even if it could, he would continue to torment the villagers with plagues or storms.

You remember standing there, at the foot of the shrine steps with your arms open as you guided frightened families to safety. You remember digging through the splintered remains of a hut in search of a crying infant you heard in the wreckage, the shaking hands of his mother when she held him in her arms again. You remember the dirt-caked face of a girl who tugged hesitantly at your sleeves just this evening as you began to prepare for your journey to the mountain, holding fresh peaches.

“Mommy told me that you’re going really far away,” she’d said, and only now do you understand the truth of her mother’s words. “She told me you just need expensive things, but I bet you’ll be hungry, too.”

You are protecting her, you tell yourself, you are protecting the children who are being punished for their parents’ selfishness. You inhale shakily and harden your resolve.

You climb onto the sacrificial altar and lie on your back, looking up at the night sky. Sano takes your arms and raises them over your head, tying them taut to the rope at its base. “Do you think they’ll do the same thing next year?” you ask, rambling nervously to take your mind off of the inevitable.

Sano walks around to stand at your side, and the tremors in your body grow even more noticeable when he begins to untie the obi at your waist and tug your robes open, exposing your bare skin. “Do what?”

“Send someone here without telling them why.” You twist in discomfort, back aching on the rigid surface beneath you, and body chilled by the night air.

“Ah,” Sano sighs, and says nothing more for a moment. You hear a strange sound, like something large dragging across the ground, and glance at him curiously.

Sano’s lower half gradually shifts from skin to pearlescent scales, a beautiful white that shines opaline when it catches the light of the moon. The coils of his serpent tail slide over the ground, looped around the altar, as he slides his haori off of his shoulders. He looms over you, the whites of his eyes turning an inky black, and you try to breathe but you feel completely paralyzed.

“I don’t think they will,” he says. He splays a hand over your chest, moving down your body to your stomach. “I think this is the last time they’ll ever do something like this.”

You inhale sharply when he leans in, face pressed into the crook of your neck, his breath heating your skin. “How can you be so sure?” you whisper.

You see, for just a moment as he moves his head and his hair shifts out of place, that his other eye is a luminescent blue like the inside of an abalone shell. “You are the answer to that,” he murmurs cryptically, and without another word, he bites into the soft flesh where your shoulder and neck join.

You gasp, your back arching off of the altar, pain like liquid fire shooting through your veins. Sano draws back, licking your blood from his lips with a black tongue, and he studies your face closely as the hand over your abdomen strokes your skin in a reassuring gesture.

“Relax,” he tells you, which strikes you as an unreasonable request, but you do the best you can. The burn hasn’t subsided—if anything, it’s grown worse—but you’re used to it now. Your senses are heightened and time seems to move slowly, the cries of stags and wolves fading into a dull rumble and the air going still. 

Sano’s fingers dig into your abdomen, pushing harder until he breaks the skin and you thrash and choke on a scream when you feel him inside, brushing against bone and muscle. He looks down at you with something like pity and you hear viscera sliding against his skin and see your blood coating his arm as he tugs on something inside of you, making you jerk forward. You hear your blood spilling over the sides of the altar and falling into the grass, feeding the spider lilies, and a chill begins to overtake you.

“I’m afraid,” you whimper.

Sano puts a hand on your forehead, and it feels warm against the cold sweat rising along your brow. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“No,” you admit, crying openly. “I didn’t want this. But I thought—!”

“—of the children,” he interrupts. “Of the innocent lives at risk. Right?”

You nod shakily.

“And what do you think those children will do when they are grown? Do you think they will offer up one of their own when they have seen they can prosper by laying the burden on the shoulders of an outsider?”

You swallow, shaking your head. “We can’t know for sure.”

“ _You_ can’t,” he corrects, and he truly sounds sorrowful for the first time. He lowers himself down where he’s torn you open, and you see the fleshy ropes of your intestines unraveling from your abdominal cavity as he takes them in his hands.

“I hate them.”

Sano pauses, glancing up at you.

“I shouldn’t,” you say brokenly. “I spent my life with them. Helping them. Watching their children grow up. I would’ve died for them, but not like this. Not being deceived like this.” You can’t reach for him, but you look Sano in the eye and you are begging when you say, “I want them to suffer for what they’ve done.”

You can’t tell what he’s thinking. You don’t know if he’s tired of listening to you talk or if he genuinely feels sorry for you. He observes you in silence for what feels like forever until he suddenly smiles. “Oh?”

“I know it isn’t right,” you say. “I know I shouldn’t want that. But I do. It isn’t fair that I die here and they reap the benefits, that they learn nothing. I don’t want you to reward them for this.” You try to relax your body, resting your straining neck and letting your head lay back on the altar, the shining celestial river of the Milky Way overhead blurred through your tears. “I give myself to you as an offering,” you whisper. “Not for them. For myself. All I ask is that they never do this to anyone else.”

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” he says. You hear his smile through his voice. Suddenly, he pulls harder, and you wheeze in pain when something rips inside of you, blood splashing the front of his body and running down his scales.

He tucks a few stray strands of hair behind your ear. “I have heard your voice,” he murmurs. “And this sacrifice is sufficient. I will answer your call.”

Then he leans forward and tears into your intestines with his teeth.

You think you should surely be dead as you feel more of your warm blood trickling onto you, dripping down the viscera he holds to his mouth. You think it should be over, but you lay there, watching clouds pass over the moon and listening to him rip you apart. He lowers his face to your body and tears your skin with his teeth, slicing through you up to your collarbones. You hear your heart beating loud in the open air.

It feels almost like you’re dreaming. You still feel the phantom, lingering sensations of something in your body, of vague things you can’t put a name to, but it seems so far away, so removed from you now. You feel as though you’re floating, looking down at your body spread beneath the serpent god devouring you. You hear his voice in your head.

_“Have you ever head the story of Minamoto no Yoshitsune?”_

Below you, Sano’s eyes are closed in ecstasy. He relishes the taste of your flesh and blood, his tail tightening around the altar. He runs his tongue over the exposed bones of your ribcage.

_“He was sent here to die, just like you. The man who killed his father feared retribution, and so he sent the boy to me and prayed for good fortune. But when I found him, he had no desire to live any longer. Not if he was going to die pointlessly on a mountain, never able to avenge his father.”_

You are motionless, arms gone limp, eyes open but gaze empty. You look down at your body and feel a great sadness. _“So what happened?”_ you ask Sano.

 _“He did the same as you,”_ he tells you. _“He offered himself to me for the promise of vengeance. And I fulfilled his wish.”_

The next time you open your eyes, you’re lying under him again, an ache and emptiness deep within you. Blood and flesh is smeared across Sano’s face, and his blue eye glows eerily. “All I ask for in return,” he says, “is everything you have to give.”

He kisses you deeply, and your mouth fills with a bitter, coppery taste. You struggle to keep your eyes open, vision growing dark at the edges and the sound of his scales sliding over the forest floor becoming muffled. You think it’s finally, finally over, and the last thing you see is a blue light in the dark.

*

It is said that, as a young man, Minamoto no Yoshitsune made frequent pilgrimages to the holy mountain he’d been condemned to as a boy. Some thought he was fearful, that he worried his marvelous swordsmanship granted by the gods would disappear if he didn’t appeal to them whenever he had the chance. Some merely thought he was humble, and that he went to thank them instead.

But you know better.

The villagers are startled to see you, and understandably so. The elder comes forward from the stunned crowd, a false smile stretched across his face. “It’s good to see you again,” he greets anxiously. “Have you brought news from the gods of the mountain?”

You don’t answer. “May I have a lantern, please?”

The villagers look hesitantly at one another before someone comes forward to give you one. You smile and thank them, eyeing the flickering candle inside with interest.

“I don’t have any news,” you admit at last. “The god I spoke to had nothing to say to you.” Your smile widens when the lantern is engulfed in flames, a blue fire surrounded by a rippling heat haze. You hear nervous whispering and look up again, your cold gaze silencing the villagers.

Casually, you toss the lantern into the nearest building and watch with twisted fascination as it flashes and sparks, igniting a towering inferno. People are running and screaming, pushing each out of the way as ashes rain over the streets and the fire circles the village.

The village elder trembles before you. You can still hear the hissing, coarse like snakeskin on the inside of your ears, still feel Sano’s hands on you and inside of you. “But I have so much to say that I don’t even know where to begin,” you tell him.

You stay to watch the fire consume the village, racing through the streets and leaving nothing but blackened earth and bones. This will not happen again. This village will never send another sacrifice, not one of their own nor an unknowing outsider. You did not die for them and they have nothing to gain.

You see a peach tree in the center of the village, picked clean that morning, slowly burn away, and you feel nothing because there is nothing left within you to feel. Your feelings do not belong to you anymore; no part of you does.

Like Minamoto no Yoshitsune, you will return to the mountain because the world beyond it is devoid of meaning. You gave yourself to the serpent god, and he is all that matters to you now.

**Author's Note:**

> in the cicada's cry  
> there is no sign that foretells  
> how soon it must die
> 
> \--basho


End file.
